Half-Yearly Blog Income Report, Dec to May 2017

Every six months I update you on how much this blog is earning. I don’t have to do it, but reading other people’s income reports is one of the reasons I got motivated enough to start a blog in the first place. Hopefully, my reports will inspire you to do the same. I’ve been writing for 2.5 years, here are each of the previous reports: I have been writing for 2.5 years now, here are each of the previous reports:

• First six months – average £35 a month.
• Second six months – average £153 a month.
• Third six months – average £910 a month.
• Fourth six months – average £3,044 a month
• The last six months (this period) – average £4,921 a month

How The Blog Makes Money

Now let’s dive in and see exactly where that money is coming from. I detailed out the strategy behind this blog in a very detailed post: Post: What It Takes To Create A Successful Blog – The 3 Crucial Aspects But let me give you the short version here. I don’t have any advertising and I don’t take sponsored guest posts (where you get paid to write a post on something). All the income comes from affiliations. That means that I earn a small commission on some of the items I talk about on this site. For instance, if you read my ‘how to start a blog post‘ and go on to sign up for BlueHost hosting, I will make about $40 in commission. If your blog then does well and you get to the point you need to upgrade, you might read my post on supercharging my blog and sign up to WP-Engine, which will earn me another $200. It’s a pretty basic way of making money from a blog. After I write a post I will Google each product I talk about and along with ‘affiliate scheme’. If there is one I will sign up and see if it makes any money. I have signed up to maybe about 50 affiliate schemes. Of which most only make a few pennies but a few do really well. I like it as it allows me to have complete quality control over the content on my site. I get to write exactly what I would anyway. If on the other hand, I put adverts on this site using something like Google Adsense, I wouldn’t get any say in what companies are displayed. Now, onto the monthly breakdown.

December 2016

Total: £3,771.67 ($4,827)

• Matched Betting/Arbing Services (Oddsmonkey, Betfair, Profit Accumulator, Rebel Betting): £3,101.67
• Starting an Amazon FBA or Ecommerce Business (Jungle Scout, Shopify, Alibaba, CurrencyFair): £437.02
• Investing (Ratesetter, Zopa): £100
• Starting a Blog (Bluehost, WP Engine): £100.18
• Amazon Associates (any physical products): £32.86

January 2017

Total: £5,071.94 ($6,492)

• Matched Betting/Arbing Services (Oddsmonkey, Betfair, Profit Accumulator, Rebel Betting): £3,047.63
• Starting an Amazon FBA or Ecommerce Business (Jungle Scout, Shopify, Alibaba, CurrencyFair): £1,511.51
• Investing (Ratesetter, Zopa): £400
• Starting a Blog (Bluehost, WP Engine): £101.26
• Amazon Associates (any physical products): £11.54

February 2017

Total: £4,620.94 ($5,914)

• Matched Betting/Arbing Services (Oddsmonkey, Betfair, Profit Accumulator, Rebel Betting): £3,408.58
• Starting an Amazon FBA or Ecommerce Business (Jungle Scout, Shopify, Alibaba, CurrencyFair): £409.19
• Investing (Ratesetter, Zopa): £450
• Starting a Blog (Bluehost, WP Engine): £284.56
• Amazon Associates (any physical products): £17.32
• Learning (Udemy): £51.3

March 2017

Total: £5,559.04 ($7,115)

• Matched Betting/Arbing Services (Oddsmonkey, Betfair, Profit Accumulator, Rebel Betting): £3,896.65
• Starting an Amazon FBA or Ecommerce Business (Jungle Scout, Shopify, Alibaba, CurrencyFair): £1,328.8
• Investing (Ratesetter, Zopa): £200
• Starting a Blog (Bluehost, WP Engine): £117.02
• Amazon Associates (any physical products): £10.87
• Learning (Udemy): £5.7

April 2017

Total: £5,160.95 ($6,606.01)

• Matched Betting/Arbing Services (Oddsmonkey, Betfair, Profit Accumulator, Rebel Betting): £3,780.29
• Starting an Amazon FBA or Ecommerce Business (Jungle Scout, Shopify, Alibaba, CurrencyFair): £1,060.17
• Investing (Ratesetter, Zopa): £250
• Starting a Blog (Bluehost, WP Engine): £42.51
• Amazon Associates (any physical products): £27.98

May 2017

Total: £5,339.31 ($6,834.32)

• Matched Betting/Arbing Services (Oddsmonkey, Betfair, Profit Accumulator, Rebel Betting): £3,912.09
• Starting an Amazon FBA or Ecommerce Business (Jungle Scout, Shopify, Alibaba, CurrencyFair): £1,117.8
• Investing (Ratesetter, Zopa): £104.17
• Starting a Blog (Bluehost, WP Engine): £180.16
• Amazon Associates (any physical products): £25.1

Six-Month Total: £29,523.86 ($37,789) All-Time Total: £54,367.73 ($69,590*) * The recent currency nightmares with Brexit probably mean that these estimates are almost certainly substantially off.

Plans For the Future

I’m pretty happy with how the blog is going. It really needs me to spend more time on it, but I have other businesses which are more of a priority. Plus if I spent all my time on the blog, I’d have nothing to write about! But what I am not happy with is how much exposure the blog is getting. I have spent very little on marketing this blog and it has been spread primarily by word of mouth, which is a shame. I think there are a lot of people who haven’t read any of my stuff simply because they don’t know it exists. So now that the blog is earning quite a lot I am going to try and change that by investing those profits. There are two things I am going to be spending money on:

• I have launched my entrepreneurship grants. Every three months I will give away $3,000 to aspiring entrepreneurs. I hope that the publicity from this will cover the costs of giving the money away. If it doesn’t, at least I’ve helped some people!
• I will be spending between £750 and £1,750 a month on SEO. Mainly keyword building. The exact amount will really depend on what I can get for my money. I have been using someone for the last two months and the results are so far looking promising.

Thank you for supporting the blog and helping it to continue to grow!